Have You Played… A Story About My Uncle?

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

A Story About My Uncle [official site] is a non-combat, narrative-leaning platformer from the same folks responsible for Goat Simulator. It tells a whimsical tale about a boy, his nomad and currently missing uncle, a fantasy realm, and jumping. Lots and lots of jumping.

Admittedly, A Story About My Uncle could for the most part exist without a story – it’s basically in place to facilitate all the gravity-defying plunges you’ll engage in while traversing its weird and wonderful world. And this is entirely fine because doing so is a lot of fun.

Early on, you’re given a magic glove that boosts you meters into the air by way of charges that regenerate as soon as your feet are returned to the ground. Once airborne, the glove doubles up as a plasma-style grappling hook, while rocket boots facilitate a double jump complete with shock absorbers to prevent damage upon landing. A combination of all three are regularly required to reach each area’s highest peaks, and you’ll use whatever environmental leg ups you can to make it so.

About halfway through the game’s modest three hour span, you’re tasked with negotiating an area of floating islands by latching onto a series of floating windmills. It’s a tough set piece, however getting to the other side unscathed is enormously rewarding – partly thanks to the game’s tight and responsive controls. I failed this particular section more times than I care to admit, however I had a great time doing so. You should too.

I personally found this game rather frustrating. There are quite a few locations throughout the game where you need to make a multi-swing jump and will repeatedly fall just a couple feet short due to each swing needing to be incredibly precise. If it weren’t for that, it would have been quite enjoyable.

There was a patch to make things a bit easier. So, depending on when you played it, it might be better now. Having said that, I played it after the patch, and I still found it frustrating, so I can’t imagine what it was like before. Still worth it though.

Oh, i love this game. The gameplay is simple and nice, but the best thing about it is the vibe of leaving your comfort and venturing into unknown. When i feel like a lazy turd, i remember the game’s ending. It bumps up my motivation everytime.

Its funny that you thought the story was superfluous, because it was my favorite part of the game. (I also liked the web-slinging of course.) (SPOILERS for story) It really hit the mark of being a slightly dreamy adventure in a fantastic world. I only got a little invested in the story of the natives but I found the relationship between the uncle and the nephew to be really touching. The ending would be a bit of a plot hole (I have to leave right now? Why not stay a month first? Why cant we work to enable permanent two-way travel?) except for the nature of the framing story. The inter-dimensional travel is really just how the nephew is choosing to remember his now gone scientist uncle and he is sharing this happy fiction with his daughter. It really touched me. I guess stories about families losing members have started to affect me a lot more as I’ve gotten older and am now starting worry about things like that.